Chapter Fifteen #2
“I wish I knew.” I run a hand along the chipped, laminated countertop, yet another part of this house that desperately needs to be replaced.
My thoughts spiral from there. Restoring the house.
Reviving the boat. Dylan’s writing career.
My teaching career. Finishing Grams’s series.
Living by the ocean. Building stronger relationships with my siblings.
Asking a guy I like if I can kiss him. Maybe inertia stops us from reaching for what we want.
Or maybe, sometimes, we’re being realistic.
After all, no one gets everything they want.
After enough rejections and disappointments, doesn’t everyone grow at least a little bit cautious?
Then again . . . “Maybe when something’s really important, we don’t ask questions. We fight for it no matter what.”
“Hmm, maybe,” Dylan murmurs softly, quietly, while nodding to himself. It’s a big maybe, a complicated maybe, one that hides far more than it expresses.
My eyes drift toward the fridge, where two magnets sit under Truth, a bird and a smile.
It’s a deceptive word, truth, because while Dylan and I are both being truthful, neither of us is fully forthcoming.
I redact, too, like by not mentioning how my gut roiled at the mere thought of returning to full-time academia, somewhere out in the Midwest, far from the ocean, this house, the boat, my siblings, and even Dylan. What he holds back, I may never know.
After an awkward silence, we resume making sandwiches, me prepping and dividing veggies, him slicing cheese, in an efficient routine we must’ve established when we started working on the house together, though I didn’t realize it until now.
After weeks of gradually aligning our schedules, we eat together as often as not, so I know he likes a lot of lettuce and a barely there layer of mayonnaise.
He knows I like extra cheese and no mayonnaise at all.
He enjoys a side of salt and vinegar potato chips.
I prefer a sliced apple or a bunch of grapes.
We both stick with water most of the time, straight from the tap. Neither of us can stand pickles.
They’re such small things, these details I know about him and that he knows about me, but we must’ve accumulated thousands by now.
I wonder what they reveal about us, these tiny truths that don’t require a game to force the revelation, tiny truths we share, simply by being and by noticing.
In this moment, that’s what feels important to me, what I’d fight for.
Noticing and being noticed, not by straining to get someone’s attention, not by forcing myself into social situations that make my anxiety spike, but organically, by existing together. By caring.
I’m still thinking about this, and about whether I’ll be able to find that kind of care in a new work environment—or even in a new friendship, as hard as those are for me to make—as Dylan and I sit down at the table to eat, settling into chairs I started to think of as his and mine weeks ago.
Before either of us takes a bite of our sandwich, someone knocks on the door.
I flinch so hard I nearly tip over my water glass. “Who the h—?”
“It’s for me. She’s early.” With no further explanation, Dylan gets up and heads toward the door while I watch, mouth agape, eyes blinking in surprise, until he disappears down the hall.
“Gaaaaaah!” a cheerful woman’s voice shrieks giddily from the doorway a moment later.
“What’s it been? Eight months? Nine? Sight for sore eyes, Dylan.
And why didn’t you tell me this place was straight out of a horror movie?
The shoots we could do here! Suzy’s next music video.
That perfume campaign. Give a woman some warning so she can come prepared! ”
Apparently, Dylan has invited a friend over, or maybe a date.
He’s never even brought up the possibility of having someone visit, so I’m dying to know who this woman is and why she’s his first guest since I moved in.
Am I also preemptively jealous? Absolutely, but my curiosity is stronger than my jealousy, so I get up and head into the hall, stopping short when I see who’s here.
She spots me at the same time and flashes me a radiant smile.
“You must be Philippa,” she says.
“Yeah, and you’re—” I almost say Euphoria Belladonna but stop myself in time.
“Trish.” She steps forward, holding out a hand for me to shake.
I take her hand, aware that I’m staring but unable to stop myself.
This woman is stunning. Literally stunning.
I am officially stunned. Her lightly tanned skin is flawless.
Her cheekbones are the stuff of legends.
Her thick black hair falls to her waist, loose and layered in a way that looks effortless but probably isn’t.
She’s about my age, with striking green eyes I thought were enhanced on the book covers but now suspect needed no enhancement at all.
She’s tall and thin, built like a runway model, in artfully distressed jeans, an open puffer coat, and a low-cut, loose tee that simultaneously suggests she threw on whatever was most comfortable and she knows what looks great on her and dresses accordingly, a skill I’ve always envied but never had.
She steps back, dropping my hand to flick Dylan’s chest.
“You didn’t tell her we were coming, did you?” she asks him.
He lifts a shoulder. “I thought it would be a fun surprise.”
“Sure, Dyl. Because random people showing up on your doorstep is always a ‘fun surprise.’” Trish rolls her eyes with exaggerated irritation, but I get the sense she and Dylan know each other well and are used to a little mutual teasing.
“Mind giving Naomi a hand with the gear while I tell your landlady what we’re doing here? ”
Landlady? That’s how he describes me to his friends?
Good to know, I guess.
Dylan steps around Trish and heads toward the gravel drive, where I can just make out the back end of a bright-red Jeep, and a short, forty-something woman with a peroxided pixie cut unloading photography equipment.
I lean forward, craning to get a better view, but Trish links her arm through mine and suggests we go sit somewhere we can “say a proper hello.”
I lead her into the living room and indicate the green velvet sofa, hoping she’ll bypass the overly vocal armchair. She follows my direction, tossing her coat beside her as she settles in and makes herself comfortable in a way my parents never even considered faking.
“I’m guessing you figured out how Dylan and I know each other?” she asks.
I nod as I carefully lower myself onto the armchair. “You’re pretty unmistakable.”
“Only to people who love the books—or are related to the author, I guess.” She flashes me another bright smile, and while it feels 100 percent sincere and friendly, if the next thing out of her mouth is a request for whatever cash I have stowed away in the house, I would give it to her.
Oh, to have the power of luminous beauty and natural charisma.
“How many covers did you shoot together?” I ask.
“Twenty-five, maybe? Whichever books didn’t have another love interest.” She crosses her long legs, letting a platform-sneakered foot swing.
“We’ve been terrible about keeping in touch since the last shoot, though we get drinks whenever he comes to Portland for work.
And he called me about your boat. Said you could use help funding repairs.
We got Naomi on board—she’s the photographer who shot most of the covers—and figured we could try crowdsourcing with a little help from Zane and Euphoria.
” She spreads her hands in an energetic voilà gesture.
And I am . . . speechless. This goes way beyond a heart pinch. It’s a full-on vise lock.
Trish laughs at my lack of response, good-humored and making her green eyes light up.
“Honestly, you’re the one doing him a favor,” she says.
“I was so glad when we talked last week. He sounded excited for the first time in years. Like the old Dylan was back, the one who rallied people behind a cause or rambled with infectious enthusiasm about the last concert he saw. Not the guy who was shattered by all the shit that went down with his wife.”
The word hits me like a tidal wave, a ten-ton slam straight into my chest. I don’t know what my face registers, but I force myself to breathe and to blink, drawing on every last ounce of willpower to not blubber out, His wife? What wife? He’s married?
Clearly, I’ve been asking the wrong questions in truth or dare.
I’m also insanely grateful I never made an overt pass at him.
And I’m very confused.
I must do a half-decent job of masking my freak-out because Trish fills what would be a truly agonizing silence by telling me about Dylan’s crowdsourcing idea, how they’ll take photos and shoot short videos on the boat, explaining that renovating it is a tribute to the author and her readers’ imaginations.
They’ll send signed pics to anyone who makes a sizable donation, and if we get the boat fully repaired and seaworthy, they’ll film a scene on the Zephyr’s Revenge II and share it with donors.
Lots of details are yet to be worked out, but the first step is to shoot as much footage as possible in the next few hours, before Trish and Naomi have to return to Portland.
“Dylan mentioned you might have some costumes we can use,” she says.
“I sold most of them,” I tell her. “But there’s some real antique clothing in the attic.”
“Would you mind?” She brushes a hand over her tee. “This doesn’t really cut it. And neither of us is twenty-five anymore. We could use a little help selling this.”